The reactor accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima continue to demonstrate severe reactor accidents leave behind a toxic waste site requiring up to century to stabilize and remediate.

Mathieu et al. (2018) describes the Fukushima accident payload associated with a so-called “early, high energy release”:

“The main oceanic releases occurred between March and April. They were primarily due to direct releases into the sea and atmospheric deposits on the surface of the ocean. Estimates of the quantities of 137Cs released directly into the ocean vary from 3.5 to 27 PBq (Bailly du Bois et al., 2012; Estournel et al., 2012; Tsumune et al., 2012; Inomata et al., 2016; IAEA, 2015a), making it the largest radionuclide releases into the sea ever observed. The evolution and fate of the radionuclides released into the ocean following the FDNPP accident have been extensively studied since 2011 and are summarised in a number of review articles (Hirose, 2016; Kaeriyama, 2017; Buesseler et al., 2017).

Mathieu, A., Kajino, M., Korsakissok, I., Périllat, R., Quélo, D., Quérel, A., … Didier, D. (2018). Fukushima Daiichi–derived radionuclides in the atmosphere, transport and deposition in Japan: A review. Applied Geochemistry: Journal of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, 91, 122–139.

“The principal releases to the atmosphere occurred between 12 March and the beginning of April. The estimated amount of radionuclides released varies between 100 and 400 PBq of 131I, between 7 and 20 PBq of 137Cs, and between 6000 and 12000 PBq of 133Xe (IAEA, 2015b; SCJ, 2014). A number of studies based on numerical simulations estimate that approximately 15–20% of releases were deposited on Honshu, Japan’s main island and the remaining 80% were transported towards the Pacific Ocean where they were partially deposited (MEXT, 2011a; Morino et al., 2011, 2013; Yasunari et al., 2011; Korsakissok et al., 2013; Groëll et al., 2014). Observations indicate that the area with a contamination level exceeding 185 kBq/m2 of 137Cs covers approximately 1700 km2 of Honshu (Steinhauser et al., 2014) and deposits exceeding 10 kBq/m2 extend over 24,000 km2 (Champion et al., 2013). Beyond Japan, atmospheric releases from the FDNPP were detected throughout the Northern Hemisphere at concentrations well below any health risk level. Masson et al (2011) establishes the inventory of measured concentrations in the air recorded by measurement network in Europe. Thakur et al. (2013) establishes the inventory of concentrations in air, rainwater, milk and food samples measured in the northern hemisphere outside Japan.”

The economic losses from the Fukushima reactor accidents and mitigation are currently ~$800 billion (2011 USDs). Those losses exceed all profits earned to date by the Japanese nuclear power industry.

And yet those damages and losses are due to ~20% of the total does released. Recall the rest went into the Pacific – unlike Chernobyl were most radionuclides remained in eastern Europe.

Like all nuclear power losses, the Fukushima accident costs are socialized since they exceed the net worth of the operating company (TEPCo).

In the US, the much more limited Three Mile Island accident still managed to bankrupt its utility owners. Nuclear operating companies are financially engineering to implode in the event their nuclear asset experiences a reactor accident. The Price-Anderson Act limits liability and utility holding companies provision just enough capital to satisfy Price-Anderson and US Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements.

The US financial surety regulations only provide for clean-up of limited reactor accidents – limited as in less than 5% core damage. The cleanup from a larger accident insurance makes the nuclear power technology uneconomic. In the event of a larger accident, the nuclear operating company declares bankruptcing Price-Anderson protected the holding company from liability. US taxpayers would have to pay the cleanup damages incurred by the companies operating the plant.

Anyone claiming nuclear power is a “good investment” is either ignorant about enterprise risk or callous about the hazards left to future generations.

Here’s an update on Chernobyl as reported in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/nuclear-reactions-reawaken-chernobyl-reactor?

‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl

By Richard Stone May. 5, 2021 , 11:20 AM

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. “There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.” The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. “It’s a similar magnitude of hazard.”

The specter of self-sustaining fission, or criticality, in the nuclear ruins has long haunted Chernobyl. When part of the Unit Four reactor’s core melted down on 26 April 1986, uranium fuel rods, their zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and sand dumped on the core to try to extinguish the fire melted together into a lava. It flowed into the reactor hall’s basement rooms and hardened into formations called fuel-containing materials (FCMs), which are laden with about 170 tons of irradiated uranium—95% of the original fuel.

The concrete-and-steel sarcophagus called the Shelter, erected 1 year after the accident to house Unit Four’s remains, allowed rainwater to seep in. Because water slows, or moderates, neutrons and thus enhances their odds of striking and splitting uranium nuclei, heavy rains would sometimes send neutron counts soaring. After a downpour in June 1990, a “stalker”—a scientist at Chernobyl who risks radiation exposure to venture into the damaged reactor hall—dashed in and sprayed gadolinium nitrate solution, which absorbs neutrons, on an FCM that he and his colleagues feared might go critical. Several years later, the plant installed gadolinium nitrate sprinklers in the Shelter’s roof. But the spray can’t effectively penetrate some basement rooms.

Chernobyl officials presumed any criticality risk would fade when the massive New Safe Confinement (NSC) was slid over the Shelter in November 2016. The €1.5 billion structure was meant to seal off the Shelter so it could be stabilized and eventually dismantled. The NSC also keeps out the rain, and ever since its emplacement, neutron counts in most areas in the Shelter have been stable or are declining.

But they began to edge up in a few spots, nearly doubling over 4 years in room 305/2, which contains tons of FCMs buried under debris. ISPNPP modeling suggests the drying of the fuel is somehow making neutrons ricocheting through it more, rather than less, effective at splitting uranium nuclei. “It’s believable and plausible data,” Hyatt says. “It’s just not clear what the mechanism might be.”

The threat can’t be ignored. As water continues to recede, the fear is that “the fission reaction accelerates exponentially,” Hyatt says, leading to “an uncontrolled release of nuclear energy.” There’s no chance of a repeat of 1986, when the explosion and fire sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. A runaway fission reaction in an FCM could sputter out after heat from fission boils off the remaining water. Still, Saveliev notes, although any explosive reaction would be contained, it could threaten to bring down unstable parts of the rickety Shelter, filling the NSC with radioactive dust.

Addressing the newly unmasked threat is a daunting challenge. Radiation levels in 305/2 preclude getting close enough to install sensors. And spraying gadolinium nitrate on the nuclear debris there is not an option, as it’s entombed under concrete. One idea is to develop a robot that can withstand the intense radiation for long enough to drill holes in the FCMs and insert boron cylinders, which would function like control rods and sop up neutrons. In the meantime, ISPNPP intends to step up monitoring of two other areas where FCMs have the potential to go critical.

The resurgent fission reactions are not the only challenge facing Chernobyl’s keepers. Besieged by intense radiation and high humidity, the FCMs are disintegrating—spawning even more radioactive dust that complicates plans to dismantle the Shelter. Early on, an FCM formation called the Elephant’s Foot was so hard scientists had to use a Kalashnikov rifle to shear off a chunk for analysis. “Now it more or less has the consistency of sand,” Saveliev says.

Ukraine has long intended to remove the FCMs and store them in a geological repository. By September, with help from European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it aims to have a comprehensive plan for doing so. But with life still flickering within the Shelter, it may be harder than ever to bury the reactor’s restless remains.

doi:10.1126/science.abj3243